Kaveh Vessali

Kaveh Vessali

Kaveh Vessali is Senior Partner and Data Practice Lead at NXN (Formerly neXgen) in Dubai. Kaveh is also currently serving as Senior Advisor to the Smart Dubai Office and the Dubai Data Establishment, where he has been helping to develop and implement the emirate’s Smart City and Data strategies for the past two and half years.

Mr. Vessali is the former Vice Consul and Deputy Chief for Economic Affairs at the United States Consulate General in Dubai. Prior to his time in the diplomatic corps, Kaveh spent 15 years in Silicon Valley as a strategy, marketing, and product executive at several software startups and global technology companies including Siebel Systems, SAP, and most recently salesforce.com, where he founded the company’s Public Sector Solutions group and served as its Global Vice President.

Mr. Vessali started his career as an urban planning and public policy economist, analyzing economic, environmental, land use, and transportation policy at the national and local government levels in the U.S. and Europe. Kaveh served as Editor of the Berkeley Planning Journal, and his team’s work on an economic revitalization strategy for the historic city of Toledo, Spain won the European Community’s urban planning award in 1995.

Mr. Vessali conducted his Ph.D. studies in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earlier received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. He also holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.